Up with the Duggars

Stark Raving Mad Mommy is okay with the Duggar family’s decision to have their 20th child. Excerpt:

The thing is, I don’t care. If Michelle Duggar wants to treat her vag like a clown car, that’s her business. It’s not like they’ve asked me to babysit their trillion kids. It seems that they don’t take a dime in state or federal support. Jim Bob and Michelle seem like loving, dedicated parents. Their kids seem pretty much normal and happy, despite growing up in what is essentially a small corporation. In fact, in many ways they seem better-adjusted than my own kids.

Funny to read SRMM’s comparison of the Duggars to other reality-show parents, with her implicit question: Who are the real freaks here?

But seriously, they’re probably not as badly off as one might imagine. The older ones can help take care of the younger ones (and may do a really spectacular job of it), the kids certainly don’t lack for playmates/helpers, and Mrs. Duggar is probably a Galaxy-class organizer and teacher.

Having the kids on television is not something I’d recommend, simply because of the added stress of the cameras—but if the parents can make the financials work AND find time to pay attention to their own relationship, more power to them. God love ’em if they can pull it off.

Duggar served briefly in the Arkansas legislature, not Congress. He ran for Senate, but lost the Republican primary.

I don’t know whether or not the family qualifies for federal benefits (food stamps seems likely) but they may also refuse to partake in such benefits (they are, after all, people who live out their principles).

There’s been a rumor for a few years that the Duggars have been claiming their house as a church/place of worship for tax (evasion) purposes. It’s never been confirmed, but then again I doubt anyone has standing to subpoena the necessary docs from the Arkansas taxation authorities to find out, one way or another.

But it doesn’t matter in another sense–one can simply question the extent to which they are truly self-sufficient apart from cashing in on their fame. It’s like Rod’s hero Joel Salatin–if he wasn’t collecting huge lecture fees across the country to tell people how to be self-reliant organic farmers, would Polyface Farms be in the black? Would the Duggars be “Biblically debt-free” without the TLC subsidies and Joe Bob peddling (for a price) books on getting debt-free? We’re perfecting a neat trick in this country in getting self-sufficient simply through telling other people to be self-sufficient.

It can be done–barely a few blocks from me in inside-the-Beltway northern Virginia (*not* the treeless exurbs of Loudoun) liveth a Godly brood with 17 sons and daughters taking up two or more pews at the local Catholic parish. Wouldn’t you know it, but one of those ghastly 9k sq ft McMansions built in the oughts, while silly for the two childless, aging hipster SWPL couples that you usually find inhabiting them, turns out to be just the dandiest thing for a posse of hyperfecund papists who don’t need or want a reality show for purposes of proselytism. See Rod, the ‘burbs ain’t all that bad!

(That was a joke, I know you already wrote your self-revisionist sort-of mea culpa on suburbia last year)

I don’t quite get all the Duggar hate I’ve been seeing on Facebook, etc.. It seems that no one has a problem with train wreck celebrities having children right and left, but people seem really bent out of shape about the Duggars. They seem to be competent parents, they are financially solvent, their children seem reasonably well-adjusted, the older ones are married and out of the house already anyway…if they want to have twenty kids, why is that so awful?

Angelina Jolie seems to be on the same path and everyone applauds her — although I guess it is socially acceptable for her to have a large family because a) she is a celebrity, b) she is not married, c) she is adopting them from other countries, d) she has an army of nannies and servants to raise them and e) she is not “ruining” her figure by being pregnant multiple times.

I used to go to church with several Duggar type families. Most had medical cards (Medicaid) for the kids. They called it “insurance for people without regular insurance” Actually if 20 kids all get jobs and pay taxes (ie Social Security and Medicare for the baby boomers), they turn out to be a good investment for the taxpayers.

A question for biology experts (which I hope can be answered non-graphically) – there was a time in centuries past when birth control methods were uncertain and unreliable, and there was a time, fewer than fifty years ago, when the great majority of American Catholics obeyed Church teaching and did not use artificial methods (and even natural methods were less reliable in the pre-NFP days). Yet twenty kids from a single womb was unheard of – the most I ever heard of in a 1950s family was thirteen, and that was atypical. What are the Duggars doing differently?

@James Kabala: Twenty kids is a large number but hardly unheard of in days gone by. My grandmother lived in a town of about 3,000, and she gave birth to my mother in the early 1940s, at the same time that another woman from a farm near the town gave birth to her first child. That same woman gave birth to her 21st child at about the time that I was born, 29 years later.

Re: Having the kids on television is not something I’d recommend, simply because of the added stress of the cameras

If they weren’t on telivision all the time, they wouldn’t have the money to raise twenty kids. The Duggars aren’t some sort of romantic, salt-of-the-earth Christian peasants, they’re just another example of the twenty-first-century cult of celebrity, and I find it a little silly that too many conservatives seem to think they’re the coolest thing since sliced bread.

The older ones can help take care of the younger ones (and may do a really spectacular job of it),

That’s actually one of the big problems with the quiverfull movement – so much of the parenting burden is placed on the shoulders of the older children. Then, we they are 18, they don’t tend to go off to college and have a life of their own but marry young and continue the same cycle.

Here’s a post by an Orthodox Christian on the No Longer Quivering blog that shows how difficult it is for the older children and how cult-like these families are: http://tinyurl.com/bvse4hn

Re: when the great majority of American Catholics obeyed Church teaching and did not use artificial methods (and even natural methods were less reliable in the pre-NFP days).

It’s possible that they weren’t actually, obeying church teaching to the letter, and were resorting to other sorts of illicit practices (which were possible even without the pill). It’s also possible that natural methods worked better than we gave them credit for. And finally, it’s likely that longer lactation played a role as well.

I think in times past, 20 was not at all common, but was not unheard of. Keep in mind that Mrs. Duggar likely has superior nutrition compared to our foremothers, and all of her children (I presume) are still alive. Families with 14 or 15 living children in the past probably also lost one or more in infancy.

Happened to be at Hershey Park the day the the Duggars visited a few years back. Seemed to consist of a bunch of TV interns and PAs herding and chasing the flock here and there; not a way for sensible people to live. it is in fact a freak show. Further once those kids start driving and going to college, if they aren’t already, Mr. Duggar had best work a 3rd, 4th and 5th job. As others have noted they are likely dependent on government susbisidies and pay almost nothing in taxes. Doesn’t seem to be much conservative about the kind of daily bread and materiel this battalion requires.

I just want to say that I have never seen the Duggars’ reality show, and think any parent who wants to make their family part of a reality show is by definition a freak. I also wanted to say that I thought Stark Raving Mommy comparing Mrs. Duggar’s private parts to a clown car was really funny.

I don’t really have a huge problem with these people having as many kids as this poor woman’s uterus can bear, but I tend to agree with Hector that this really seems to be more about some weird conservative-christian celebrity life-style statement than it is about the kids themselves for their own sake.

Also, the vagina/clown car bit is a pretty old gag in internet-years – I think it first started circulating when they were only on 16 or 17 kids back around 2004 or so.

Given that we hand and citizenship and welfare to any anchor baby whose mother can drag her cooch across the border like a receiver breaking the plane of the end zone, I can’t work up an outrage over the Duggars getting some indirect subsidy.

Re: so much of the parenting burden is placed on the shoulders of the older children.

Oh the humanity!
But really: when I was growing up and most families had children, plural, it was utterly normal for older siblings to be given the care of the younger at times. My own half-brother, nine years my elder, was my baby-sitter regularly.

By the way, I had an ancestress in the mid 1800s who had 18 children, if you count a couple of still births. But only six of those children lived to adulthood.

@JohnE: What’s different? For one thing, the last few Duggar births have been by cesarean section. Also, at least one of the kids was in the NICU for a time, if I remember correctly.

Plus, she and the children have benefited from prenatal care, better prenatal nutrition (especially if they do take food stamps or WIC), and modern hospitalization.

While some births which are deemed to need c-sections today would probably resolve without a c-section, others would kill both mother and child alike.

This is why 19th century women of means used to spend months or even years living away from their husbands; at the spa or sanitorium; helping their aging parents, etc. It kept them from getting pregnant, and was considered socially acceptable.

Finally, we really need to re-examine our modern prejudices against pre-medical birth control. There was a lot of it in use, of a wide variety, and it actually worked pretty well, even if the net result was that you wound up with 4 or 5 pregnancies instead of 20.

Some Reality TV stars are an embarrassment to America when they travel abroad.this includes the Duggars.
BTW social security is a forced savings account. I doubt if the girls will be allowed to work outside the home long enough to earn it. As far as older ones raising the younger ones, what worked in the 19th century doe snot necessarily fly today. Helping you family out is one ting but you should have your own life.
“Given that we hand and citizenship and welfare to any anchor baby whose mother can drag her cooch across the border like a receiver breaking the plane of the end zone, I can’t work up an outrage over the Duggars getting some indirect subsidy.”
Given we hand the rest a reality show to supposed Christian families who have kids. IMO married or not they are not setting a better example.